Any company that provides Canadians with a service that stores or transmits information … can be told to install “any device, equipment or other thing."
There are no “safeguards” other than that the devices or systems so installed should not “introduce a systemic vulnerability.” As we have all been repeatedly reminded by recent events one cannot arbitrarily add surveillance features to every Internet service without them coming with new attack surfaces that will inevitably introduce new vulnerabilities. That it will be unintentional when it happens is not such a great safeguard. There are many other problems with the bill, but that part in particular is so obviously egregious that I can’t understand why there still isn’t more reporting that explains or at least acknowledges just how crazy it is.
I mean it’s not just “unsettling” for lawyers. It’s a law that clearly has no place in anything meant to resemble a democracy. It ought to be a major scandal that anyone thought it would be acceptable to even propose it.
It almost seems insulting that they didn’t employ more subterfuge. Normally when the forces of evil want to advance the country towards totalitarianism they’ll be clever about it, as with the previous government’s C-63 which would’ve opened the door for a newly-created regulator to do some similar things specifically to social media. At least last year they thought it was worth the effort to try and look respectable and provide a rationale, a cover story for what they wanted to do.
This one it’s just “we hereby grant ourselves the power to install a backdoor for the spies in every Internet service that’s available in Canada.” Don’t worry, it’ll be properly authorized spies only — with a few new additions to who gets authorized — and it’ll be totally secure. It’s like those videos on youtube that exist solely for the purpose of infringing someone’s copyright and we’re meant to assume that it’s legally okay because the description says “no copyright infringement intended.” It’s the border security bill, no security or privacy risks intended.
There are plenty of other things in there that could more aptly be described as unsettling, where the implications aren’t entirely clear to me such as with the money laundering stuff. If they scrap the completely nonsensical part the committee will still have its work cut out for it in evaluating the rest.
There are no “safeguards” other than that the devices or systems so installed should not “introduce a systemic vulnerability.” As we have all been repeatedly reminded by recent events one cannot arbitrarily add surveillance features to every Internet service without them coming with new attack surfaces that will inevitably introduce new vulnerabilities. That it will be unintentional when it happens is not such a great safeguard. There are many other problems with the bill, but that part in particular is so obviously egregious that I can’t understand why there still isn’t more reporting that explains or at least acknowledges just how crazy it is.
I mean it’s not just “unsettling” for lawyers. It’s a law that clearly has no place in anything meant to resemble a democracy. It ought to be a major scandal that anyone thought it would be acceptable to even propose it.
It almost seems insulting that they didn’t employ more subterfuge. Normally when the forces of evil want to advance the country towards totalitarianism they’ll be clever about it, as with the previous government’s C-63 which would’ve opened the door for a newly-created regulator to do some similar things specifically to social media. At least last year they thought it was worth the effort to try and look respectable and provide a rationale, a cover story for what they wanted to do.
This one it’s just “we hereby grant ourselves the power to install a backdoor for the spies in every Internet service that’s available in Canada.” Don’t worry, it’ll be properly authorized spies only — with a few new additions to who gets authorized — and it’ll be totally secure. It’s like those videos on youtube that exist solely for the purpose of infringing someone’s copyright and we’re meant to assume that it’s legally okay because the description says “no copyright infringement intended.” It’s the border security bill, no security or privacy risks intended.
There are plenty of other things in there that could more aptly be described as unsettling, where the implications aren’t entirely clear to me such as with the money laundering stuff. If they scrap the completely nonsensical part the committee will still have its work cut out for it in evaluating the rest.